A member of former President Cristina Fernandez’s cabinet was sentenced to nearly six years in prison on Wednesday, one of the highest-profile convictions in a corruption crackdown that has also ensnared Fernandez.

Julio De Vido, who served for 12 years as planning minister under Fernandez and her late husband and predecessor Nestor Kirchner, was sentenced to five years and eight months on charges that he siphoned money from public works projects, indirectly causing a 2012 wreck of a passenger train that left 51 people dead and 700 injured.

De Vido is also under investigation for his alleged involvement in a broad corruption network in which Fernandez and dozens of former officials allegedly accepted hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes from construction companies to secure public works contracts.

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